Tiguas ordered to remove ‘sweepstakes gaming’ or face stiff penalties

Federal Judge Kathleen Cardone has ruled the sweepstakes kiosks set up at Speaking Rock and the Socorro Entertainment Center amount to illegal gambling.

Cardone’s May 27 ruling states the Tigua Tribe is in contempt for operating lotteries. It has 60 days from the date of the ruling to remove the kiosks or it will be fined $100,000 a day.

The tribe maintains the machines are sweepstakes games and the donations from users help fund its health care, education and safety programs.

Court testimony indicated there were around 14-hundred of those machines at Speaking Rock and the Socorro Entertainment Centers at one point.

For more than 15 years, the tribe has sought to institute various forms of gaming on its reservation, while Texas has sought to stop it, arguing it is violating Texas gaming laws.

The original injunction was filed September 27, 2001 by the Texas Attorney General’s Office.

In 1987, Congress passed the Restoration Act, which restored the federal trust relationship between the United States and the Tiguas. It specifically states all gaming banned in Texas is banned on tribal land.

If the tribe or its members engage in gambling, the judge explained, the U.S. courts have exclusive jurisdiction and there is nothing in the Act keeping the state of Texas from taking the tribe to court to make it comply.

In 1988, a year after the Restoration Act, Congress passed the Indian Gaming Regulatory Act (IGRA), creating three tiers of gambling. The Tribe argued IGRA supersedes the Restoration Act, but Judge Cardone disagreed.

The judge said the 5th Court of Appeals had already concluded the Restoration act, and not IGRA, “Would govern the determination of whether gaming activities proposed by the Ysleta Del Sur Pueblo are allowed under Texas law.”

Calls to the tribe’s attorneys were not immediately returned.

Judge Cardone also ruled she will not be pre-approving the tribe’s plans for games because the court should not be overseeing or monitoring the minutiae of the tribe’s gaming-related conduct.

“This lengthy procedural history in this case has consisted of the Pueblo Defendants submitting proposals over the course of a decade, seeking the Court’s approval to conduct various gaming activities and declarations that such activities comply with Texas law,” the judge’s order states, “This course of this litigation has transformed the Court into a quasi-regulatory body overseeing the Pueblo Defendants’ gaming-related conduct. This is a role which the Restoration Act never contemplated for the Court and it is a role that the Court will no longer carry out.”

Cardone said that if the state thinks the Tiguas are violating the law, the attorney general should file a suit.

According to the ruling, investigators with the attorney general’s office will no longer be allowed to access the tribe’s records or locations on a monthly basis.

Cardone removed that allowance, quoting the tribe’s argument that “maintaining the injunction is no longer prudent and unnecessarily exposes the Pueblo to continued uncertainty regarding its ongoing and future operations.”